A for Andromeda

UK TV

Review: A for Andromeda (UK: BBC Four)

3 April 2006 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

Wow. I know A for Andromeda was on a week ago, but I’ve only just got round to watching it. To rephrase a famous quote from 2001/2010: “My God. It’s full of arse.”

I can’t believe how mind-numbingly dull it was. Seriously, how do you compress six episodes of an old serial down into an hour and a half and still produce something so unbelievably tedious?

There was a good plot in there, trying to get out. I could see it. It had some nice moments and occasional touches of atmosphere. There were even some good actors. But direction and script? Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Fair enough that the original wasn’t much cop, but it still had some interesting ideas in there. With a bit of nurturing we could have something really worthwhile. But we didn’t.

So, it looks like this might be the last of the BBC4 “classic” remakes, then. So much for The Road: I was really hoping they could redo that, given it’s been wiped from the archives and it’s got one of Nigel Kneale’s finest scripts behind it. But on this performance, I’m guessing we won’t be seeing much more in a similar line from BBC4, especially with FictionLab given the shutdown orders.

Can’t believe that’s an hour and a half of my life wasted, as well as my childish enthusiasm totally dashed. There is no Santa Claus, after all.

A for… effort?

3 March 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

BBC4 is four years old today. Or maybe it was four yesterday. So happy birthday or belated happy birthday to BBC4 then.

Anyway, I noticed a trailer on 4 for the new version of A for Andromeda yesterday and was impressed to see that they were good enough to get Susan Hampshire in. Hampshire played Andromeda in the follow-up to the original series – The Andromeda Breakthrough – when Julie Christie turned down the chance, and it’s nice to see 4 showing that kind of respect to the original work. Classy, really. Well done.

UPDATE: Bollocks. It wasn’t Susan Hampshire. It was Jane Asher. It’s more A for Artichoke Hearts and Angel Cakes then. Oh well.

A for Andromeda to get a live remake like The Quatermass Experiment

26 January 2006 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

David Tennant in the Quatermass Experiment

Just in case you missed it, wedged as it is under news of Kenneth Williams’ diaries being dramatised, the Media Guardian reports that BBC4 is to remake A for Andromeda. Just like last year’s The Quatermass Experiment, which featured new Doctor Who David Tennant, it’s going to be a condensed version of the original, performed live on the night.

In case you missed The Quatermass Experiment (it’s available on DVD if you want to catch up), it was actually rather good and quite creepy – a curious combination of theatre and television that’s so rare these days. Since I’m the proud possessor of the Quatermass Collection as well, I can say it was significantly better than the original, which was slow moving to say the least – of course, by the standards of the 1950s, the original was a veritable hurricane.

The original A for Andromeda titlesAs I recall, the story’s pretty good, despite being put together by Nobel Prize-winning physicist and “life evolved in space” nut Fred Hoyle. It bears remarkable similarities with the naffo Species, although it bears none of that movie’s deficiencies, so we know it can fit into a couple of hours without serious plot-curtailment. I have high hopes for this live version. No word yet on casting, but I suspect D Tennant will be a bit too busy to make an appearance this time round.

PS BBC4 again. They’ve definitely been at those super-wheaties.

PPS I had copies of the few remaining bits of A for Andromeda and its sequel The Andromeda Breakthrough back in the early 90s, but I purged them long ago in one of my Nights of the Long Video Knives. You can view the title sequences at TV Ark. While you’re at, have at look at the Ace of Wands titles, complete with Thames TV opener: they’re magnificent. They were victims of my library purge, too. Sigh.